Anthony’s Announcement

As many of you are aware, Anthony has stopped WUWT for two days, pending an announcement, which he describes as important. I have no idea what it is. However, no one can say that he doesn’t have good instincts for how to attract attention to the announcement. It will have to be pretty good to live up to this hype; Anthony also knows this.

314 Comments

Speculation has already begun at Bishop Hill and Lucia’s. Most common is something to do with Climategate 3 or RC-FOIA. Some suggestions of something to do with a lawsuit, but hard to see why that would warrant the suspense. Dunno.

Anthony filled me on Friday afternoon. I suggested that he dial back expectations which were running amok (including me) – which he did. I also made some hints to this effect once I knew. I do not have a large contribution to the paper. I did some statistical analysis which Anthony wanted to include.

I suspect he’s not going to find a “serious” journal that will be willing to get it peer-reviewed, let alone published before the IPCC deadline (so that it won’t be included).

After the Steig v. O’Donnell and Spencer v. Dressler sagas there are many scientists that have chosen to simply refuse reviewing of any publications from a growing list of authors, which effectively sidelines them from publication due to the lack of available expert reviewers necessary to get it done.

There is another way to get into the IPCC reports despite the work not being published… but apparently that’s up to the lead authors (who are quick to protect their own work that clearly have no conflicts of interest with the advocacy groups with which they strive).

But, it’s also possible that Anthony has found and has been hiding an entire family of Himalayan Yeti, and now that he’s had time to learn their language, they’ve revealed that Mann is one of them. And that he shaves most of his body (including the top of his head) at least twice a day?!

Well, they did recently find that valley hidden in Antarctica. Maybe he’s been tipped off to something discovered in it and wants to break the story first (this speculation is for anyone who’s watched Stargate SG1).

I know anything I speculate will be wrong in the end, so might as well be outlandish!

My guess is that FOIA, disgusted at the comments made last week by the uk police when they announced the end of their inquiry, has decided to release the password to crack the CG3 emails.

The person known as FOIA must have found some very juicy stuff in CG3 to justify password protecting it.

Anthony needs 2 days to go through the thousands of emails to find the juicy ones. He knows that in CG1 the emails came out and the narrative was not clear. Phrases like “hide the decline” were widely misunderstood and had a diminished impact.

I am sure that he is preparing a long and clear explanation contextualising and explaining all of the contentious emails. He wants to be the one who writes the narrative. He wants all the journalists to be looking at his blog so they get the message from one source. It’s communications 101.

Stopping WUWT for 2 days seems bizarre, unless it’s become involved in litigation and the stopping is pursuant to court order.

If the FOIA password has been divulged, it would almost certainly mean that a lot of time would be required to sort through the emails to discover momentous things, but why shut down the site? Couldn’t the reading be done simultaneously? If it was the release of the FOIA password, Steve would be enlisted to help sift the now-readable emails.

It could be that Muller et. al. are going to republish with radically different conclusions (seems unlikely) and Anthony wants to call attention to the significance in a more powerful way than just throwing it on top of the other things. In other words, the stoppage is an attention-getter and nothing more.

Unprecedented could also mean that it is nothing any of us will think of.

Details next week, along with instructions how how you can get one easily and put your own sweat equity into it and save a bundle…and have it paid off quickly and fully own it…unlike those lease programs that require 20 year payoffs…and by that time the company may be gone and the panels fading.

If he’s starting a new business and promoting it on WUWT, offhand I think that’s incompatible with the free wordpress hosting which can’t be used for for-profit purposes.

So a suspending of publishing during a hosting change sounds believable.

It has to be something big beyond WUWT interest. I don’t “know” a thing about what’s happening, but the extraordinary announcement which Anthony posted means he KNOWS this is really big and not just “inside baseball” for WUWT devotees. Anthony has been in and around the news media his whole career — he would not create this level of expectation just for an anticlimax that would burn his bridges with many media and blogger types.

Compare the following to everything that’s happened related to climate issues through the years, including all associated with CG1 and CG2, IPCC issues, public/political dimensions, etc., and I think this upcoming announcement on Sunday must be bigger than or at least different from what we’ve seen before:

1) “controversial and unprecedented nature”
2) “a major announcement that I’m sure will attract a broad global interest”
3) “Media outlets be sure to check in to WUWT on Sunday around 12PM PST and check your emails.”
4) suspending publishing on the site for two days (and AW’s post a week ago about working on a large and urgent project might be relevant?)
5) cancelling vacation plans – why does he feel he needs to be the Captain “on the bridge” when the site can be monitored from anywhere? Suggests he expects to be totally focused on the aftermath of the announcement, responding to media, etc.?

Whether or not it relates to Mr. FOIA or some other leaker/whistleblower, it’s got to be very newsworthy. If it’s not at least similar to CG1 in media impact Anthony risks a serious backlash.

Great to see you here, Skiphil. Just want to add weight to what you said. Anthony is a newsman, why do newsmen stop the presses? He’s also made a call out to the media, and will be sending e-mails to places. So whatever it is, is huge, as he’s put the weight of his credibility and that of WUWT’s on the line.

The more I ponder Anthony’s post, the more I think that it is something with significant political ramifications and goes beyond the standard CRU nastiness: My best bet (or best wish) is for something coming out of the Fenton Communications’ cess pool. That would likely cover the team plus a large array of activist groups.

Let’s see.
Unusual enough to result in a cancelled vacation. Thus nothing that he was expecting anytime soon.
Changing servers for a commercial venture? He already has a commercial site and has used WUWT to plug lots of his endeavors.
If it is not CG3 then it is something that he needs to inspect, can be done on a weekend and that only takes a day or two to get through.

This better be good. It doesn’t have to be video of aliens walking around Area 51 smoking cigarettes, but if it doesn’t reach beyond the skeptic echo chamber, he’ll have some serious egg on his face. CG3 would qualify, assuming the contents are juicy enough, but proof Gleick did the deed probably wouldn’t.

The fact that the announcement is comming on a Sunday likely means it is not related to official business of any kind (lawsuits, new papers, Muller stuff). I say this only because the “other party” in something official would want to coordinate press releases. And no one puts press releases out on Sunday afternoon ( that’s considered the dead zone of the news cycle).

The timing also may suggest that he has some control but not a lot over the release of the info, since he did not release it today yet considers it urgent enough to release before Monday. Must be extremely rare for any media-savvy person to choose to make a big announcement on a Sunday. Also the fact of postponing his vacation for it, not just an important paper or news item that could be release while he’s gone or when he gets back.

A Sunday afternoon, which normally would be avoided by all people interested in affecting the news cycle, suggests to me that there might be a lot of information and details to be absorbed, so that he is confident it will be studied on Sunday and still written/talked about in Monday’s news?? All speculative, I know…..

hee… I’m thinking the part about postponing the vacation really suggests he expects to be right in the thick of a media storm in the coming week… there are lots of other big items or papers, announcements, etc. that could be released and he would be happy to be away somewhere quietly, letting others discuss. Plus, in the digital world it’s not exactly difficult to be engaged (well unless it was some camping or wilderness vacation). The fact that he thinks he needs to stay home may indicate expectations of a lot of interviews or minute-by-hour monitoring of emerging stories, new developments?? ha more speculation….

I sent Anthony a copy of some correspondence a few years ago now, but I suspected there was a problem with the airmail as he never replied. I guess it must have just been delivered. Still, better late than never, I say.

Maybe a real big time insider Phil Jjones or Briffa or similar have simply given up and decided to spill the beans or its FOIA3. Another possibility:Penn State may have decided to actually boot Mann NOW before they are sued to oblivion by the Sandusky affair and “associated” scandals. Maybe some lawyers have advised the AGW, newspapers governments or one at least that the game is about over and to move on? The evidence for @@@@@ is overwhelming at Steven Goddards site. He has kept REAL records of the manipulations taken together I think there is a real Court case available. For example if @@@@@ is definitely shown and case is won one, The Australian Goverment and Gillard Could be in real trouble? ALL speculation of course.

Having embraced, then traded away, two doors behind which I expected a cache of Michael Mann emails, I’m considering what options are left.

While I agree the Fall et al door is a likely “winner”, such a prize, after the build up, would be like expecting the car or the Hawaiian vacation, then winning the ten-year’s supply of Rice O’ Roni. A very valuable prize, to be sure. Not exactly envy-inducing, though.

Supposing that AW and a respected, credentialed, team of allied demonstrate that a slew of poor data processed with poor techniques produced a poor conclusion. Is that in fact unprecedented?

Anthony’s update says it’s nothing about FOIA or any political/social aspects. He does say “important implications” but it sounds like it grows from one of his own “projects” not from some incoming scoop:

Hmmmm… j ferguson said above : It could be that Muller et. al. are going to republish with radically different conclusions (seems unlikely) and Anthony wants to call attention to the significance in a more powerful way than just throwing it on top of the other things. In other words, the stoppage is an attention-getter and nothing more.

There is still” broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature”. AW does not publish posts lightly, so it will be most likely as he says. It could be that the BEST project has found something but you would think Mosher would know about this speculation anyway…

Kip I doubt that its BEST. The update could be a distraction. Watch out for any resignations or firings in the climate business in the next few days could be a clue.. Again this is pure speculation on my part.

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, “Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?”
And he says, “How?”
And you say, “What does this mean?”
And he screams back, “You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones

“somethings happened” = something has been discovered, maybe with UHI or other very important official current climate data. The persons in charge have openly admitted it. WUWT is a skeptical site so it will not favor the AGW position. The data or information is beyond reproach hard evidence. That’s my bet.

Anthony received his galley proofs Friday with the usual requirement to return them in 48 h (i.e., Sunday noon). The editor states the paper has been accepted for publication. It’s the follow-on to Fall et al. It shows an unequivocal falsification of a central tenet of AGW theory.

He couldn’t plan for it because editors always return the galleys just before (sometimes just after) you leave for vacation. Check. He has to shut down the blog because he has to read every word himself. Check. It’s not FOIA but it is “one of my projects”. Check.

Checking JGR’s list of papers in press (accepted) I found on the bottom: Cornes, R. C., and P. D. Jones “An Examination of Storm Activity in the Northeast Atlantic Region over the 1851-2003 period using the EMULATE gridded MSLP data series.” J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2010JD014865, in press. [Abstract] [PDF] (accepted 7 December 2010)
Waiting for Godot?

Something happened can imply something unexpected. The fact that the announcement won’t wait can imply that he must share the news now otherwise it will anyway come out.
The fact that it concerns one of his projects and will be of wide media interest pretty much implies BEST in my humble opinion. If I recall correctly he was mighty annoyed with Mueller for showing early results without his permission. Perhaps Mueller’s team has found some interesting results and have decided to let Anthony release it first ahead of a formal submission to peer review. Perhaps he wishes to discredit the BEST results in some way.

One fact clearly distinguishes skeptics from alarmist: skeptics have one hell of a sense of humour, that’s from all the comments here, Lucia’s etc… haha Even SM quipped above re Gleick. I wonder if Gleick would do the same in this situation re favouring their point of view…

Lance: AW only does temperature measurements (UHI etc., He is a meteorologist). I doubt if its an attack on one of the central theories of AGW which is more a domain of atmospheric physicists. My two cents worth.

Could be this Steve reynolds at Bishop Hills blog posted “New BEST results with proper UHI correction show only 1/2 previous warming” and Muller has concede he is correct aka there is no significant global warming even with NOAA GISSS ect data due to UHI . Speculation but stronger.

If its just reporting information from someone else, then there has to be a compelling reason for them to use (or allow) Anthony to be the ‘media outlet’. also, as others have mentioned, it probably needs to be something that has come up rather unexpectedly…..less no need for cancellation of the vacation.

I’ve got it! Michael Mann has written an effusive “open letter” of apology to the world, to be published first on WUWT (I know, it should have come to Steve and Climate Audit, but bear with me). He admits that he has been an insufferable boor even to his colleagues, that he fooled everyone, that the hockey stick blade really goes down (see photo at link), and that politicians never should have been told to promote his work (see 2nd photo). Mann announces he will retire to a remote Buddhist monastery to contemplate the sinful nature of humanity, the need for inner peace, and the unreality of suffering.

It may be that BEST is coming out with something that again directly challenges AW’s Surface station project conclusions. It may be that he cancelled his vacation and shut down his blog so that he could generate an appropriate response.

Rabett has simply re-posted Bailey’s from Reason.com mentioned above. BTW, I have confirmed by email with Bailey that he has not misstated the rumor – he means 1.5 C and NOT 1.5F — well , his rumor was, he admits, a but garbled, but he’s pretty sure about that part. Bailey has asked all concerned to stress that THIS IS A RUMOR.

” Tuesday is the last day to have papers considered in the next IPCC report. ”

This could be the most significant speculation I’ve read so far.

This means that Muller, who pulled a somewhat premature PR stunt with the original pre-release of his team’s papers, will certainly be published in the coming days.

In timing this so closely he will avoid any possibility of a critical or rebuttal paper or even a comment being published, that could be taken into account for use in AR5.

AFAIK, the software and data was never published in a format that could be run on a PC (Steve’s initial criticism) and has thus avoided the possibility of broader peer review.

Hopefully he will have realised that Bangkok airport is not really a rural site and the UHI paper will no longer be demonstrating a rather improbable UHI cooling in some areas.

Reason.com reminds us of Mullers original comments:
>>
The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us, since our preliminary results don’t yet address many of the known biases. When they do, it is possible that the corrections could bring our current agreement into disagreement.
>>

Should be interesting but I don’t see major indicators of pure science in their gaming the release dates and preventing citizen scientist review of their work.

Lots of speculation. I think people have picked words out of his original announcement and read into them what they hoped he had to say. (ie “Global”) I was also tempted to do so. His update, I don’t think, was to “scale back” anything but rather to reign in the rampant speculation. I’ve never seen anything he’s said that would make me doubt his integrity. I’ve seen him publicly admit when he made a mistake. (Unlike some we know.)
I’ll wait to see what he says.
But I am glad, from what I gather from his update, that it doesn’t look to be a personal or family problem.
(PS You should all check out Stacy’s anular eclipse photos.)

Anthony updated his page tonight and it looks like a big Nothing Burger… I’m sure Anthony think his pet projects are newsworthy and possibly appeal to a larger national audience but thats vanity. Good luck to whatever new project news he’s announcing tomorrow.

It doesn’t explain the no posting at all at WUWT. So I think this has nothing to do with vanity. And since ‘something happened’, it is a sudden event that needs all time and effort of the WUWT crew. Meanwhile, I think it’s a publication on something important, which also does not explain the ‘something happened’ announcement. So I have no clue either, but to let down Anthony the way you do now? It doesn’t show any respect for him and his efforts. You owe him an apology upfront.

Well, I hate to risk being wrong, but I do want to offer a theory I haven’t seen suggested yet:

Anthony is involved in the creation of a new print publication of some kind. It will probably be a collaborative effort (with who I’m not sure) that will become a new outlet for news and work that questions climate orthodoxy.

I’d like something vaguely like that to be what the project turns out to be. However I am kind of expecting to be disappointed and feel that Anthony is taking a big risk in making such an announcement. If this isn’t a very big deal at this point, WUWT’s reputation may be irrepairably damaged.

Anthony has created a new product and has generated affiliation(s) with other interested parties to promote the product. This product will be interesting to people who follow climate alarmism and what the climate actually does.

What has thrown me of is I don’t know why that would be unprecedented. But it is important to Anthony and that is good enough for me. I like to see people innovate and reap the rewards of that innovation. Then again I could be FOS.

There’s got to be a third party involved that is going to break this news wide on Monday whether Anthony does anything or not before-hand.

That’s the only thing that makes sense. What is interesting is that apparently Anthony feels he needs to drop everything for a 100% effort between now and Sunday at noon to provide the context he feels is necessary to put whatever it is in the best light possible from his perspective.

There’s no other reasonable explanation for what he’s said.

And yet it is about one of his ongoing projects. So. What makes sense to me is he is about to go into business in a big high-profile way with someone controversial (in some way) about something controversial (in some way).

But “controversial” could be main-stream controversial, *or* it could be “controversial” to his traditional base, the skeptics.

He’s got a paper in press with Mike Mann?

The mainstream establishment is about to give him a big grant to do something?

It may be that BEST is coming out with something that again directly challenges AW’s Surface station project conclusions. It may be that he cancelled his vacation and shut down his blog so that he could generate an appropriate response.

How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect – extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide. …

Same old correlation equals causation argument. And the last sentence is simply untrue. Natural fluctuations and variability caused the MWP and the LIA didn’t they? Why couldn’t they be at work now?

Even that’s kind of misleading. It’s not a binary choice between anthropogenic and not. Lukewarmers generally believe that the warming is a combination of greenhouse and “natural variation”. This means that you can’t simply ask the question as if it is or isn’t. There are an infinite number of combinations possible. And most of them probably “fit” reasonably well. This is why trying to make the GHG correlation “fit” is pointless.

People should keep in mind that high answers to the question of how much the temperature has been warming recently would not prove humans are to blame.

There are more fundamental questions extant of CAGW proponents, including failure of models to predict reality, a fundamental limit to the effect CO2 can have because of physics of emission and absorption, and the proxy analyses that Mr McIntyre critiques.

“It does however have something to do with one of my many projects.”
“There will be a major announcement that I’m sure will attract a broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature.”

Nobody has said this yet, but maybe NOAA has noted Anthony’s surface station project and decided to have him fix the official reporting stations. It relates to one of his many projects. It is controversial because the CAGW community doesn’t take seriously the urbanization on temperature records. It is unprecedented because how often does a government agency willingly admit they are wrong. And by so doing, this may make official weather bureaus in other countries fix their weather stations.

The “converted sceptic” meme still doesn’t sound convincing in the context of his climate business background and prior quotes.

Let’s see if his work improves anything from the last piece, which includes the implausible UHI result, and the total neglect to explain deviation of land temperatures from ocean temoperatures and satellite data.

Most important is probably the last point, “I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about 1.5 degree F over land in the next 50 years”.

That would just be about 2 degrees Celsius in a 100 years over land and much less over land and oceans combined, without doing anything and comes pretty close to sceptics estimations and is far off the IPCC estimate.

“Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

Andrew Montford of Bishop Hill about the Muller’s ‘conversion’: “Interestingly, I learn from Anthony that this is not what has caused him to postpone his vacation. There’s more news coming later today.”

I like Watts, but this seems really, really stupid on his part, especially if this doesn’t rise to, at least, the level of CGI or CGII. I have a feeling Watts is going to be trying to explain even to his fans the point of shutting down the site this way.

Readers and commenters are being unappreciative and un-understanding of how much work it takes to manage a blog.

I know what Anthony’s doing. He’s trying very hard to finish something and finally decided that it was impossible to do so while the blog was live. I sympathize with this 100%. People, including me, read this the wrong way.

So true, I know from friends who have given up on doing far more modestly visited blogs (nothing like on the scale of CA or WUWT) that it becomes major work and hard to find any real down time. I completely sympathize with why AW needed to be offline to work on a big project. He should feel free to do it more often with maximum understanding and support from readers. All most of us do is drop in as we feel like it to see what’s new or pop off now and then.

I know what Anthony’s doing. He’s trying very hard to finish something and finally decided that it was impossible to do so while the blog was live. I sympathize with this 100%. People, including me, read this the wrong way.

All it makes me want to do is to thank Anthony for that effort – on Watts Up With That, for many long months, and now on this project. Who are any of us to feel ‘let down’ by Anthony Watts? Some people.

I’ve had dinner at Muller’s house and we’re on very friendly terms. I wish people wouldn’t get so wound up.

If the issue was ‘managing a blog,’ surely he didn’t have to make the grand ‘wait for it’ announcement. He has assistants who help him occasionally – he could have just disappeared for a couple of days without the drama.

If this is spurred by the reports of a forthcoming Richard Muller BEST study and op-ed summarizing that work, it is well worth reminding climate alarmists that we should have been to this point in the discussions a lot sooner, had there not been so much obstruction and malice from “the Team”. Steve and Ross and others have been working for a decade to improve the science, rigor, and transparency in the face of so much foot-dragging and worse. Muller himself strongly criticized Mann et al in the past:

[cross post with BH] As alarmists jump on the Muller bandwagon to shout “see we’re right” it’s important to remind them that 0.8C in the next 50 years is nothing like the extreme scenarios CAGW projects based upon various claimed positive feedbacks.

Also, Muller does have a bunch of statements through the years expressing the extent of his concern about CO2 and human impacts upon the environment, so he was never some severe skeptic about all AGW who has suddenly changed his tune. What he objected to repeatedly was sloppy science from “The Team” that was muddying the waters for science as well as for public debate. I’ve not seen anything to indicate he takes back his contemptuous words toward Mann et al’s work in MBH98/99.

Two pop articles from Muller in 2003/4 show his disdain for Mann et all in MBH98/99 and his acceptance of the McIntyre/McKittrick criticisms thereof. So one thing that needs to be said to the alarmists, repeatedly, if/when they celebrate Muller, is that he showed almost a decade ago why Mann et al were holding back the science. The Fact that so much time and energy of so many people has been squandered over a decade and more by the Manniacs is a disgrace. Had “science” including journal editors, colleagues, and vaunted peer review been able to clean up the Mann messes a decade ago, everyone would have been spared much nonsense.

It is no defense of Mann’s PCA and “hockey stick” to say anything similar is reached by other studies, other routes. It does not serve science or intellectual integrity to approach even the “right” conclusion by incorrect methods and bad work.

Then why is he claiming he was a skeptic? The NYT op-ed is clearly implying he was a skeptic who has now been “converted” – this is clearly not true. Are we not supposed to believe his unskeptical position he was quoted on repeatedly?

“If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.”
– Richard Muller, 2008

“There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.” – Richard Muller, 2006

“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003

My apologies – Muller is clearly a very upfront guy about his position and his op-ed is not misleading in any way. There is obviously nothing misleading about this at all.

sorry, I didn’t mean to sound wound up “at” Muller so much as at how this will be spun in the media and public discussions (already on ThinkProgress etc.), as in “oh Muller was a leading skeptic and now the debates are over.”

I only meant that once Muller has announced he is fairly well satisfied on surface temp issues it does not mean either that there never were issues with Mann et al (which he described emphatically) or that current and future “extreme event” attributions are all plausible. Muller discusses the latter in his NY Time op-ed and seems rather dismissive of a lot of attribution claims. So I only meant to point to some common ground between Muller and a lot of readers here and at BH, WUWT, etc.

BEST relied on AW’s resources for their last paper and then surprised him with their publication and conclusions. He (and Doc Curry) complained loudly.

My bet is that on Sunday JGR will announce a BEST update with extreme (from AW;s perspective) claims. This time Dr. Muller was kind enough to give AW reasonable notice. He’s moral compass being well pointed prevents him from making an announcement in advance of publication.

In the meantime the regular posters for WUWT have been preparing rebuttals, etc, and are too busy to write and/or moderate. Hence the temporary shutdown of that site.

Lance Wallace and Lucy Skywalker have guesses that seem to have teeth to them. But I have doubts that this paper will deal that hard a blow to manmde global warming theory as we would wish it too. There’s been other blows to it that we thought should have done greater damage than they did.

To my mind, there are some elements of this Op Ed that are reminiscent of the Norfolk Constabulary’s “approach” in reaching their conclusion (announced in their News Release – but modified in their subsequent “Media Briefing Q & A)that no one at UEA is implicated in the “sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack”.

A rather telling – and (considering the IPCC’s July 31 deadline for inclusion in AR5) conveniently timely – excerpt from Muller’s Op Ed:

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

There are lots of caveats, of course. And who knows, perhaps this latest “finding” is “in press”. But colour me very unimpressed by BEST’s best!

WUWT has not completly ceased publishing. Comments to existing articles and the Tips page are still being moderated. Here is a small bit from one of the moderators:

[REPLY: Donations don’t come to Anthony’s attention immediately… it’s kinda automated… and Anthony is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY busy and distracted at the moment. Your support is truly appreciated and I think you will find the wait quite worthwhile. What Anthony is going to publish tomorrow is not of the flashy fire-works variety, rather it is a tectonic sort of event. Lots of people are going to be, shall we say, non-plussed? Could even get bloody. Stay tuned, and thank you for your support. -REP]

“Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.”
“Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophistical statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist Robert Rohde, and which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), data selection (prior groups selected less than 20% of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100%), poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones), and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions. …”

“If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.”
– Richard Muller, 2008

“There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.” – Richard Muller, 2006

“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003

The converted sceptic narrative is, of course, disturbing, not only because it is obviously not quite true and highly disputable, but also because low level non expert not really interested in facts media will trumpet this “message” in the first place. Mueller should know that and sadly, he delivers for those agendas.

Exactly, that is the real problem with this story. All that it going to be touted is a “skeptic” has been converted, which is completely false and an intentional distortion by Muller. This shows to me his agenda is political propaganda.

My prediction: This will be much ado about nothing. It was “unexpected” because Watts got a phone call offering him a position. Accepting this position would require him to suspend or modify his blog. For instance, he might be invited by Mitt Romney’s campaign to head a climate task force, or been offered a position at NOAA to lead a surface station project. In either case, he would no longer be able to blog freely.

Here is my prediction. Muller has another op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, another PR piece in conjuctions with a paper for AR5. WSJ this time offered Anthony Watts the opportunity to write a rejoinder to be published along side. The timing of the embargo means that this is the time it goes online for the WSJ-Europe edition.

“Richard Muller’s op-ed in the New York Times is now published.
Interestingly, I learn from Anthony that this is not what has caused him to postpone his vacation. There’s more news coming later today.”

It could be that a opportunity has openned up rather than some scoop or other. Maybe he has found an option to do something quite new to his website.

I could see that splitting it between a debating, campaigning blog and something more akin to an online journal might suit him and potentially others, but there are hurdles to doing that.

If some group with the required academic credentials is coming together and would agree to form a board, create a publiehing policy with good open credentials, data, peer-review, right to reply etc., there might be something in that for Anthony and such a group.

Wow. Kudos to Mr Watts. Didn’t realize he was a business pioneer and inventor. Maybe some big corporation is investing heavily in Watts ITworks? Or could it be Watts is releasing a solar-powered version of the blade servers, thus driving power costs down to a fraction of the current cost? Yessir, living up to his name.

I meant to check itworks.com to see if there were hints there. While it does refer to the blade stuff as new, it’s been in the works for a while. The link goes to buildablade.com which Anthony registered in November 2010.

If it’s related, it needs a controversial aspect, so perhaps something like big oil buying a substantial percentage of the business. Using the racks for on-site seismic analysis could qualify.

However, unless was was big enough to rock Wall St, there’s no reason for the announcement to be on Sunday. Perhaps it’s to announce that there will be a demonstration on Monday, and Anthony & co have been working all weekend to set that up.

One with the recent changes at weather.com and wunderground, that could fit into something like regional weather servers providing online media and needing low power servers to handle it all. Or perhaps weather.com is going global (there’s a global aspect to fulfill).

I’ll thinking this announcement is related to the surfacestation paper by Watts (Fall et al., 2011). Could it be that NOAA wants to fully fund the Surface Stations Project, and has asked Watts to take charge and overhaul the USHCN set of weather stations?

Hope that if this is the case, Watts won’t succumb to all that government climate money that is going to start raining down on him.

This copied from Plazaame at Lucias re Muller
“plazaeme (Comment #100288)
July 29th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Richard Muller 2012:
“CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.”
Richard Muller 2003:
Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.”
Thank you Plazaeme A link to the original quote would be greatly appreciated

non·plussed/nänˈpləst/
Adjective:
(of a person) Surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
(of a person) Unperturbed.
So shocking so as to confuse(my addition)

This suggests a turn coat a really big one maybe Mann is FOIA? (Joke) Could be BRiffa, Jones or someone who has decided its time to get out before lawsuits start. My guess is that The Muller thing is a last grasp at giving some respectability for some of these guys to fall back on in case of the legal questions which will arise

Either that, or Anthony got blindsided by the BEST project that he was supposed to have a role in, and got backstabbed. Judging from the NYT interview, the rather unremarkable results reported so far are being spun furiously as absolute proof that the team was completely right about everything. Don’t be surprised if a coordinated media blitz comes out of this.

Just FTR, while I noted that Anthony Watts has several moderators and trusted authors, his update to the announcement does say “As many of you know, running WUWT is a monumental task which I could not do without the help of many people. Even so, it still requires my constant attention.”

Meanwhile there is an article on WUWT about problems with surface temp monitoring stations.

While everyone is hot on their seats with the curiosity building, I can’t help but think we will be in for the same sort of Harold Camping “the world is going to end ” type of prediction.

After all, virtually everything Anthony puts up on his blog is wrong, misleading, irrelevant, or otherwise scientifically unimportant. Why would anyone expect this round to be different, except that he asked you to wait a few days to hear about it.

Ok so WUWT has published what we all knew along there is of course a very very significant warming effect form encroachment/building/population effect from most of the Stevenson boxes everywhere its double so basically when you come down to it there is no AGW

Well, they do find .15+ per decade. What is interesting is I have read papers by some solar guys who said 35% of the increase in the period could be explained by the intensity of the last few solar maximums (among the most intense in centuries). So if half of what they compared their 35% to was spurious siting issues, then 70% of the per decade increase to the new actual would be from the solar effects. Doing the math that would leave .05+ for the net on other causes.

Granted the above is a swag-ish broad brush and simplistic, but it points to the significance of the finding in the new paper. A resulting rate that is .5+ per century (after you remove the solar effect) is not one that supports impending doom in the next couple decades or even a century.

Not at all. I had no idea at the time of the post that Anthony planned to announce this weekend or with such fanfare. Mosher and I talked about it and both assigned about a 20% to Anthony’s announcement being something to do with the surface stations project.

I helped with the statistics at the finish line, which Anthony was grateful for.

Well we can conclude from the UHI effect reported by Watts et al., that there is no significant AGW. Something I and my father (Atmospheric Physicist working for the WMO for 12 years) suspected a long time ago.

This appears to be quite an achievement by the usual suspects!
Congratulations to all who worked on and supported Anthony’s Surface Stations project and what has followed. Recall in the beginning how it was criticized by some as an exercise in futility by the ignorant. At the very least I think it is fair to say that the Project and it’s progeny will move Climate Science forward. Further, this is a an interesting instance of how the Internet can work positively in engaging the public, indeed the World, with evolving science in a positive manner.

Further, this is a an interesting instance of how the Internet can work positively in engaging the public, indeed the World, with evolving science in a positive manner.

Crucial point. Open science gurus in the UK like Cameron Neylon, Peter Murray-Rust and Glyn Moody should love and embrace Anthony Watts and the Surface Stations project for this. One day the ideological blinkers need to come off the rest of the Open Knowledge crowd as well and Watts seen as heroic pioneer he is. I await that moment with some delight.

Anthony has put his paper out for review following Muller’s practice. When Muller first
released his papers he also released the data. If you search you can find Willis complaining
about the status of that data ( preliminary ). Here at climate audit, Steve requested
and audited the Rural station dataset. Folks here seem to agree that letting reviewers have access to the data is a good thing. You cant review without it. We also know from the gergis affair
that people often say that they performed one calculation in the paper and actually forgot
to do the calculation. So A good reviewer wants to see the code as run.

Now, Does anybody want to wager whether the data and code will be released for this paper
right now? How about the raw data? that is the photographs and the google earth work?
Let me anticipate an objection. Some folks may suggest that there is a concern that
people will take anthonys data and publish their own paper. That is easily handled with
a confidentiality agreement. No reviewer can use the work he reviews to write his own paper and submit it for publication.

Not going to wager, but I think they should make all of the data and methods used available – I’d be fine with anyone interested having to sign a non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement in order to get access to it if they feel there’s IP involved ahead of a possible publishing. And – if there’s an open source or cheap version of our IRM software that would eliminate anyone’s ability to make copies,send to others, etc. that’d be fine too.

From what I could see, the paper was released in something of a hurry in response to Muller’s paper. There were a number of grammatical problems in the paper which seem to support that point of view.

So assuming it was just the writeup that was rushed and not the analysis itself, I wouldn’t mind betting they simply aren’t yet in a position to package the data and code all up and make it available without running the risk of making an error in doing so.

Mosher – STFU.I am sure everything will be released in due time. Unlike BEST, this work will never be considered by IPCC or the team to to fuel the effort to destroy the USA. Therefore, the two papers do not need to play by the same rules.

I don’t write papers and have no intention of writing papers. I will prepare data for other people writing papers, or help manage the data they make public, but writing papers is not something I want to do. A blog post, yes, a poster, that was fun. But mostly it’s the data I am concerned about and open tools to make research more open. pretty simple. I might write a paper on a database or a tool, but not anything where I did actual climate science.A man has to know his limitations. If my name appears in anything but the acknowledgements its because someone decided that working on the data was some kind of authorship. In my mind, the person who writes the words is the author. quaint idea, but it keeps me from having to defend analysis that I disagree with.

Mosh was replying to me but I’ve only just seen his reply, having been poring over completely different data and source code. I think what he says is completely fair comment. Surface Stations is a remarkable example of mobilising citizen science through the internet. But of course they have to match BEST or better them on openness. I’m foursquare with Steve on that.

As far as I can see the main novelty is that the weather station classification scheme of Leroy (2010) is better than Leroy (1999).

It would have been more elegant if Watts had stated in his press release that the differences between stations of various qualities he found in the temperature trends are only visible in the raw data. In the homogenized (adjusted) data the trends are about the same for all quality classes. No more sign of errors due to the urban heat island.

That the trend is stronger in the homogenized data is no surprise, the transition to automatic weather stations during the study period has caused an artificial cooling in the raw data.

The new Leroy siting classification for land weather stations reg. temperatures deals better with UHI effects.
Example: class 1 · Flat, horizontal land, surrounded by an open space, slope less than 1/3 (19°).
· Ground covered with natural and low vegetation (< 10 cm) representative of the region.
· Measurement point situated:
o at more than 100 m from heat sources or reflective surfaces (buildings, concrete surfaces, car parks etc.)
o at more than 100 m from an expanse of water (unless significant of the region)
o away from all projected shade when the Sun is higher than 5°. A source of heat (or expanse of water) is considered to have an impact if it occupies more
than 10 % of the surface within a circular area of 100 m surrounding the screen, makes up 5% of an annulus of 10m-30m, or covers 1% of a 10 m circle.

Some commentators have speculated that SMc and Moshpit knew more about Anthony’s ‘scoop’ than they had admitted to. Call me old-fashioned but my gut-instinct is an equivocal ‘no way’
Evidence, minimal; certainty, certainly!
Steven MKc exudes integrity, where I’m concerned. Mosphit also and even when he annoys me with his cryptic clues. I never doubt him either. Dammit but he is so infuriating at times!
Love them or loath them, don’t matter, they just seem so trustable.
Sceptics/Lukewarmers may share similar viewpoints but conspiratists they aint!
They are their own men and unless we get AuditGate that’s my twopence worth.

Just read the Thank You to you from Anthony Watts at the WUWT blog.
My hat goes off in admiration.
They should make people like you, by the dozen.
¡Enhorabuena!
( And thanks for being such a great guy )

Beautiful smokescreen by all. McIntyre and Motl playing their parts perfectly, sending the alarmists off on a wild goose chase. Result: Muller’s pseudo-scientific claims killed off within a day of publication. I would hate to play chess with Anthony Watts.

I just posted the following as comment #734 over at WUWT, but fear it may get lost in the uproar. Here it is only #284!

Here is an important point of clarification, though one that doesn’t affect the results:

The rating system used by Surface Stations in the past and presumably by all subsequent papers until this one is due to CRN, not to Leroy 1999. Although the CRN system is based on Leroy 1999, it greatly simplifies it by just looking at distance to nearest heat source, without compensating for the size of that source. The CRN simplification thus unnecessarily disqualifies many good stations that have nearby walkways, small buidings, etc.

The new Leroy 2010 classification system is almost identical to Leroy 1999, but has not been available in an official English form until 2010. I did a translation of Leroy 1999 that I sent to Anthony back in 10/2007, but I never received permission from Leroy to post it on my website or circulate it widely.

So the big difference in the methodology of the new study and previous ones is between CRN and Leroy, not between Leroy 1999 and Leroy 2010.

The primary (but minor) difference I can find between Leroy 1999 and Leroy 2010 is that the latter has relaxed somewhat the angle of altitude below which the sun is allowed to cast shadows on the sensor. For Class 1 this was 3 degrees, but now is 5 degrees. For class 2 this was 5 degrees, but now is 7. For class 3 this was omitted, presumably by an oversight, but now is 7 degrees. For class 4 this was 5 degrees, but now is 20 degrees.

The only other difference I can find is that formerly class 2 allowed vegetation up to 25 cm in the surrounding area, but that has now been reduced to 10 cm.

The Leroy 1999 paper was presented as the position of Meteo-France. The new paper expresses the hope that the system will become the new WMO standard, perhaps at the CIMO XV conference in Sept. 2010. I don’t know how that came out.

“The only other difference I can find is that formerly class 2 allowed vegetation up to 25 cm in the surrounding area, but that has now been reduced to 10 cm.”

– so this criterion is obviously transient (or could be) throughout the study period. Would exceeding the 10 cm threshold turn a 1 into a 2? That was one aspect of the study I’m still pondering….they use a 2010(ish) snapshot to classify an instrument location but then it seems to assume that throughout the entire period that the situation was static (or was metadata/site knowledge used to ensure that conditions had not changed throughout the period?)

I posted this comment at WUWT yesterday, but no reply that I’ve seen. Anyone have an opinion?

Congratulations on what looks like (on a very quick reading) an excellent contribution to climate science.
One question; you state in the paper:
“Where such discrepancies could not be resolved, or it was determined from photographs, 271 metadata, or curator interviews that the station had been closed or moved after 2002, and 272 prior location could not be established, that station was excluded from consideration and 273 not included in this study.”
How much do you know about how the quality of stations has changed with time (especially ones changed prior to 2002)? If the quality of individual stations has changed over the entire period from 1979 nearly randomly, then you might expect those going from good to bad to have an elevated trend, but also those going from bad to good having a reduced trend. Has this potential source of systematic error been considered? This could be significant if many of the currently good stations were previously bad.

Steve Mosher’s posts (some of them) irritate a lot of people, myself included. But Steve does at times have extremely important insights that support the whole process of bringing light into this murky corner of Science. He did astounding difficult, brave and responsible work handling CG1, which nobody should forget. And he’s been around a long time, generally supporting work here and bringing up relevant challenges and issues.

Steve Mac, I hope you will run a post (or even posts) here that allows people to “audit” Anthony’s paper thoroughly re the science, as Leif and many others know is essential for its safe passage through peer-review and publication.

I too subscribe to the notion that this paper is “tectonic” in its potential importance for the reform of Climate Science, and therefore deserves to be opened to the hardest and keenest criticism here.

Mosher (and a lot of other people who comment here) have been pushing authors to “release the data, release the code” for a long time. It would be disingenuous to not hold the Watts et al team to the same standard.

The immediate cessation of snark and arrogance would be uncharacteristic too, IMO. 🙂

To map out who is who and why in the CAGWpropaganda circus. Who made Muller a “Voice” in the debate? Who appointed him as a speaker of “scpticism” in the kongressional hearings who is orcestrating this deceptive fars? Any leads?

Just to clarify my “telling porky pies” comment, it was said tongue in cheek, it was not an accusation of lying, rather a “ooh you naughty little boys for keeping a smokescreen” – if indeed it was one.